It is important to clean and sanitize your knives on a regular basis to prevent the spread of bacteria. Details on when must a knife be cleaned and sanitized.
A knife plays a major role in kitchen utensils. In order to maintain the cleanliness of your knives, it is important to take care of them.
Due to the presence of bacteria and other infectious agents in the food and human hands.
These infections can cause diseases in other people that use such knives. Moreover, the food sliced from these knives also gets bacterial infections from such knives.
Thus, for protecting your families, guests, and friends, you must keep your kitchen utensils such as knives clean and sanitized. There is no need for expensive materials in this process.
Throughout this article, we will discuss the importance of cleaning and sanitizing your knives at certain times.
Moreover, some tips to keep your knives clean and fresh for a long time.
Read also: Best Kitchen Knife Set Under $300
How often should you clean or sanitize your knives?
Working with knives is not a simple task, even when they are clean. But, it is generally very difficult and dangerous to work with dirty knives.
It can easily damage someone’s health. As it contains a lot of bacterial infections coming from the knives. These infections can also lead to some life-threatening diseases.
1. After cutting different foods
When you are in the kitchen, various food items will be provided in front of you. Thus, to save time, you would cut them quickly with the same knife.
People often think that it does not affect the food. But, they are very wrong. Cutting different foods with the same knife at the same time can produce high-strength bacterial infections.
These infections may go into the food or some other kitchen utensils. Its best example is cutting fish and raw meat with the same knife. The skin of the chicken and the scale of fish have a variety of bacteria over them.
These bacteria get attached to the knife’s surface. Thus, they can easily be transferred to either food or some other material.
Therefore, it is very important to clean or sanitize your knives after cutting one food material. So, that bacteria do not get transferred from one to another food material.
This will help you to prevent everyone from getting any sort of viral infection or disease. Thus, leading you to a perfect and healthy life.
2. After multiple uses of the knives
The fastest way of spreading bacterial infections is hand-to-hand contact. Suppose, you are in the kitchen, and you are grilling something with a knife. Your knives are needed to cut fish for a person.
Now, all the bacteria from his hands, fish, your hands, and your grill will be present on the knife at the same time.
As a result, more powerful bacteria will be produced that can easily damage your health.
3. After buying new knives
After buying new knives, many people think that these knives are purely clean. There is not a single bacterial molecule on their surface.
But, these people are wrong. This is because these new knives are full of bacterial infections. They are never been cleaned, since the day they were constructed.
Now, all the bacterial infections from their construction materials, delivering packages, and the hands of the delivery guy have been transferred to their surface.
Therefore, it is generally essential for you to clean or sanitize these knives before using them. Thus, no bacterial infections can be transferred from these knives to your food and no disease can take place.
4. After sharpening your knives
Sharpening your knives can increase the total lifespan of such knives. Sharpening makes your work easy, and you can cut through any material with any hard work.
However, in the sharpening process, many small metal pieces, dust, and dirt can be attached to your knife.
As a result, you can easily transfer dirt particles from the knife to your food.
Customers may experience many problems as a result. Recent research has shown that it can lead to life-threatening diseases like obesity and hepatitis.
5. After cutting washed fruits and vegetables
Cutting washed fruits and vegetables is the least effective way of getting any infection or disease.
This is because, if your food items are already clean, then your knife can not get dirty.
Thus, no infection will be transferred from its surface to your food. This prevents you from getting any sort of disease or infection from your food.
This step is not very important. Therefore, it is present at the end of this list. However, it will be better for your health to at least wash these knives for one time before using them again for cutting food.
How to clean your knives after their use?
All dirt particles on knives are removed by cleaning them after use. There are a few easy steps involved in the process.
- When your work is completed, it is now time to clean the knives. Remove all debris from the body of your knife first.
- It may be pieces of fat, cheese, bread crumbs, or some other materials. After removing them, cleaning because more simple and easy.
- Now, you require some hot water. It may be boiled because it can easily kill bacteria at a higher rate.
- Sink your knives in this boiling water. But, you need to sink them at a specific time limit. Sinking them for too long can damage their blades.
- You can use soap or even a dishwasher to wash and clean the knives. You should clean them with these materials for at least 2 minutes.
- Now, you should use some warm water, not boiling water, to remove the soap from the knife’s body.
- Once the knife is fully cleaned. You should use paper towels to remove water from them.
You can easily restore the appearance of your knives by following these few steps. As no bacterial infection can survive these given steps.
How to sanitize your knives?
The word sanitize here refers to the shine of the knives. As when you buy new knives, they shine. After sanitizing them, you can again turn them into a shiny substance like the new ones.
It also involves a few steps. All of them are simple and easy to follow.
- Clean the knives. You must first clean your knives according to the list of steps given in the upper heading.
- You require 1 liter of water and bleach mixed in it.
- Now, let your knives be sunk into the bleach mixture for some time.
- Take your knives out and clean them with a paper towel.
Cleaning of Cutting boards
In this given knife cleaning process, people always forget about the major people of cutting boards. These boards are also involved in the cutting of food materials.
Therefore, they should also be cleaned. Both knife and food materials are placed on it before their use.
Thus, if this board is not clean, it can easily transfer the bacteria present on it from one to the next material. Thus, you should also sink them in some warm water with some soap and a dishwasher for about 30 minutes.
FAQs
The best time for cleaning your knives is before and after cutting any food material. Thus, no bacteria from the food can go on to some other material.
It is the blade that should be cleaned most often on knives. It is responsible to cut through every substance and has the most amount of bacteria attached to it.
No, the dishwasher can easily destroy the quality of your knives. Therefore, it is said that you should never sink your knives in the dishwasher for more than 2 minutes.
Conclusion
In this article, we informed you about the main steps and tips for cleaning your knives. So, that you can protect yourself and your family from any kind of bacterial infections produced by them.
If you ask me what is the best way to clean our knives, then I will advise you to use bleach in their cleaning process. It will easily make them look like new knives in no time.